Young Earth or Old Earth?

“But since none of the over 1,500 appearances of the word Yom in the Hebrew bible unambiguously use it in a non-literal manner, we can safely posit that its use in Genesis 1 is literal.”

“This sampling shows that the Hebrew BEYOM refers to a single day, not to a conglomeration of indefinite days or an era of indefinite time.”

“However, it is very difficult to prove that the Hebrew word for “begot,” dly (yalad), can refer to anything other than a father/son relationship.”

“Of the Catholic Church Fathers, few ventured into the area of biblical chronology, but those who did have dates that congregate rather closely around 5000 to 5700 for the date of Adam.”

“They all state, including Augustine’s prior view, that the days of Genesis 1 were to be interpreted in their literal sense. Many of the Fathers, both east and west, even specify a “24-hour period.””

“As we have seen, it is a fact the Church Fathers, in absolute consensus, believed in short-ages, not long-ages of billions of years.”

“But this doesn’t mean, of course, that a non-24-hour interpretation is correct or even the best interpretation of the text. It only means that someone will not be canonically liable if he decides against a 24-hour interpretation.”

“We also know the 1909 Pontifical Biblical Commission said that exegetes could interpret the word “day” as “twenty-four hours” or “a certain period of time,” but the Commission never said or implied the “period” could extend for billions of years.”

“Before the Fall of man, Scripture is clear that there was no death, at least for the small human community of Adam and Eve. Logically, if there was no death in the animal kingdom, then there could not have been any carnivores before the Fall.”

“Moreover, in the doctrine of Original Sin, the Church teaches that physical death is a result of the first sin, not the result of an evolutionary life-death cycle seeking higher forms of species.”

“But whether the system is, indeed, closed to parent and daughter isotopes over millions of years is the question that Dalrymple cannot answer since he does not know what happened in the past.”

“Obviously, if a percentage of the Lead existed when the rock was created rather than to the decay of Uranium, then the age of the rock will be much less than if all the Lead in the rock was due to Uranium decay.”

“Since that is the case, then if the earth is billions of years old, the organic remains of organisms that died millions of years ago should no longer contain any Carbon 14.”

“In fact, the amount of Carbon 14 found in dinosaur bones, and the remains of other kinds of plants and animals, is consistent with the biblical age of the world of much less than 10,000 years.”

“The stratified deposits, which reached a thickness of twelve feet in forty-eight hours, showed particle sorting and bedding planes.”

“Obviously, if the above data from Austin and Berthault is correct, it would categorically deny such a long time period to the Tonto Group. In fact, the experiments show the Tonto group could have been formed in as little as days or weeks.”

“It would certainly be illogical to argue, on the one hand, that God created the stars instantaneously, but then argue, on the other hand, that He could not perform a creative miracle and allow their light to stretch instantaneously to the Earth.”

“Within the distance of 16 billion miles, the light from the stars travels to Earth in a period of 24 hours or less. As such, we have satisfied the objection concerning how starlight could appear on Earth on the Fourth Day of creation.”

“let's say we assume t0 is 6,000 years instead of 13.7 billion. In this case, where z = 1 then t = 2,121 years.”

“Essentially, whether they know it or will admit it, Big Bang proponents have invoked instantaneous creation, similar to that described in Genesis, to answer the anomalies of their theory.”